Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes

• For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

• First would be the literary side, then the spiritual and philosophical. The political side is required principally because of the necessity of the current Russian position.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

• Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

• Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open the heavy curtains which are so dear to you – you do not even suspect that the day has already dawned outside.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

• Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

• Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

• A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

• A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

• You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power – he’s free again.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

• Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Topics in Age

• You can have power over people as long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Topics in Power

  Tags in Authority

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (51)

Birth:	11th December, 1918
Death:	3rd August, 2008
Nationality:	Russian
Profession:	Novelist, Soldier, Teacher

About

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn Russian: Алекса́ндр Иса́евич Солжени́цын, pronounced ˈksandr, 11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, two of his best-known works. Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974, but returned to Russia in 1994 after the Soviet system had collapsed.

Related Authors

• Kim Harrison
• Lisa Kleypas
• Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
• Rick de Marinis
• Wright Morris
• Natalia Ginzburg
• Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
• John Kennedy Toole
• Sarah Fielding
• Lisa Scottoline

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 4th January

Births

• 1954 - Eugene Chadbourne
• 1960 - Michael Stipe
• 1905 - Sterling Price Holloway Jr.
• 1883 - Max Eastman
• 1905 - Sterling Price Holloway Jr.

Deaths

• 2005 - Robert Heilbroner
• 2001 - Les Brown
• 1985 - Russell Page
• 1960 - Albert Camus
• 1786 - Moses Mendelssohn